Kitchener 417 King Street West | 179.25m | 55s | VanMar Developments | Kirkor Architects

Pinski

Pinski

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This development has been anticipated since late last year. Located at the heart of downtown Kitchener kitty corner across from the king/Victoria LRT and future transit hub.

A 55 storey mixed use tower. This will be likely the second or third tallest proposal in Kitchener and the fourth 50+ storey proposed.

The land was purchased by Vanmar Developments who is also doing The 50s Station Park and 45s 10 Duke West. This is the iconic Ziggys cycle location that has moved in April to a different location.

This block includes the 19s 1 Victoria and 45s TEK tower (under construction)

This is block is bringing some pretty high density to the downtown core.

Renders will be available this week and will be posted here.

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More density on King Street? Excellent.
As for the aesthetic quality and architectural worth of the building - well, I guess we'll see. Kitchener's condo legacy so far has been unremarkable at best. Let's hope those involved bring their best to this project.
 
They really need to get around to reducing parking minimums, or at least mandating most parking to be underground (it's a large box even with this building having 4x less than the usual ratio!).

Bets case scenario here is to wrap the park and king facing sides with units to reduce the effect of another blank wall.
 
emphurent said:
They really need to get around to reducing parking minimums, or at least mandating most parking to be underground (it's a large box even with this building having 4x less than the usual ratio!).

Bets case scenario here is to wrap the park and king facing sides with units to reduce the effect of another blank wall.
Click to expand...
Agreed, but easier said than done. You'd reduce the size of the garage by 12-13m on at least two sides, making it almost redundant since you still need 5.6m for spaces and 6m for drive aisles. Once that's all factored in, you'd basically have no actual space left for parking. That said, I completely agree that above-grade parking needs to be regulated out of existence. It's something I'm always happy Toronto did years ago, even if it adds significant costs to each project.
 
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Sunnyside said:
I can’t tell if this is better than, or just more of, what KW usually gets.
Click to expand...

Compared to a lot of the projects that KW gets this is definitely significantly better. While Kirkor may not be top tier it is significantly better than a lot of the projects that have been done in the region. Station Park has turned out pretty good so far and is done by Kirkor so I have hope for this project. But in comparison to anything being done by SRM this will be pretty nice.
 
The site, how it roughly looks to-day. (Cleaned up from Google Earth). The new tower will sit on the site of the grey and purple low-rise, with that little parkette in front. It should extend back to more or less touch the grey tower behind (north) of it. Looks like their podium size will be in agreement, at any rate.
The new TEK Tower's site (already under construction) is between the grey-purple low-rise and the Lang Tannery Building warehouse on the left. The new GO/VIA/Bus terminal will be over on the right hand side of the photo, where a bridge can be seen crossing King Street North.
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I'm glad that this new proposal is aiming to keep the street lively by putting retail on both main public sides of the base.
As mentioned above, I would like to see the city nix this 'above ground parking podium' trend, as we've got a number of new towers with this unhappy feature already built. They do have a tendency to overwhelm the street-level retail beneath them, and they can't really be converted to any other uses - offices, clubs, etc. in the future.
 
Some more shots of the site before it all starts.

From King W and Francis looking N-NW
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The south edge of the property, with it's little fronting parkette...
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The existing building on site, King St. W
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The gap between the existing building on site (to be filled by the new tower) and its grey neighbour to the north. When built, the buildings should abut each other here.
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The existing building on site looking south-west-ish. TEK Tower crane in the background.
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This was up for approval at city council tonight however planning staff asked for it to be deferred until the next council meeting. However the reason is rather peculiar at least in terms of KW development. Staff said that they were recommending deferral of the project to the next meeting in order to hear back from NAV Can with regards to potential impacts to the regional airports flight path. I don't think there would be any considering the AZR (Airport Zoning Restriction) zone is on the opposite side of downtown Kitchener from this development but it appears that there might be. This is the first time flight paths have ever been potential issues for developments in KW though. The only other time was when the building boom first started as Ornge had issues landing at the helipad because of tower crane booms. A few of the cranes got large red beacons because of the flight path but Ornge stopped using it soon after. The helipad is now used as the staging area for Station Park. What makes this situation even more strange is there are other approved developments in the AZR which didn't have any problems and they range from 15-44 floors so I have no idea what the potential issue could be considering this isn't even in the AZR.
 
NAVCAN has responded back to VanMar and the city with regards to the development. Although this isn't in the AZR of the airport it is actually still affecting it due to its height which is why NAVCAN had to review everything. Nothing will change to the building itself after NAVCANs review, thus staff are recommending approval at the council meeting on the 11th however there are certain conditions that must be followed:
  • No changes can be made to the building height dimensions and location
  • No changes can be made to the tower crane height, swing radius and location
  • Runway 26 will have the following changes due to the building
    • While the tower crane is up RWY 26 will have a climb gradient of 270 FT/NM
    • When the building is complete RWY 26 will have a climb gradient of 220 FT/NM
  • Any crane used to erect the tower crane and take it down is required to undergo NAVCAN review
The coordinates of the tower crane show it to be roughly central to the site for those interested the coordinates are below in DMS Lat/Long
  • 43 27 08.1036N, 80 29 49.9848W
NAVCAN report

The fact that NAVCAN took this long to go over this building it seems probable to say that NAVCAN is also behind the delay in the 50 Borden Ave S ZBA/OPA approval which is right next to the AZR, it was originally scheduled to go to council in September but disappeared off of the agenda before the meeting happened, and Station Phase 3's SPA which has been under review since the beginning of February.
 
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